Sukhoi Su-2 — History, Specs & Stories

Sukhoi Su-2 Soviet WWII single-engine light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft
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Sukhoi Su-2
Pavel Sukhoi’s first aircraft

A rugged Soviet light bomber thrown into the fire of 1941 — the first machine ever to carry the Sukhoi name, and the aircraft in which the only woman to ram an enemy plane made her last flight.

1937First flight · as the ANT-51/BB-1
~910Aircraft built · to 1942
~460 km/hTop speed · Shvetsov M-88B
600 kgMaximum bomb load
Photo: SDASM Archives · no known copyright restrictions
RoleLight bomber & short-range reconnaissanceEraWWII · 1937–1942Engine1 × Shvetsov M-88B radialOriginUSSR · SukhoiStatusRetired · none airworthyWant to fly a real fighter jet yourself?
The Story

Pavel Sukhoi’s first aircraft, forged for a war it could not survive

The Sukhoi Su-2 was born of a Stalin-era competition. In 1936 the Soviet leadership issued a requirement — code-named “Ivanov” — for a simple, mass-producible multi-role aircraft that could bomb, scout and support the army. Several design teams answered. The winning entry came from a brigade led by Pavel Sukhoi, then working inside Andrei Tupolev’s design organisation, which is why the prototype first flew under the Tupolev designation ANT-51, in the hands of test pilot Mikhail Gromov, on 25 August 1937.

Ordered into production as the BB-1 (blizhniy bombardirovshchik, “short-range bomber”), it was renamed the Su-2 in 1940 under a new system that used the chief designer’s initials — making it the very first production aircraft to bear the Sukhoi name. It was a clean, low-wing monoplane of mixed construction: a plywood-skinned wooden fuselage married to metal wings, powered by an air-cooled radial and crewed by two, a pilot and a navigator who doubled as rear gunner. On paper it was thoroughly modern for the late 1930s.

Then came 22 June 1941. When Germany invaded, only around a hundred Su-2s were in front-line service, and they were committed immediately to daylight bombing — often without fighter escort, against an enemy with air superiority. Losses were severe. The aircraft itself was sound and notably rugged, able to bring damaged crews home, but the tactical situation was hopeless. By 1942 it was being withdrawn from bombing and shifted to reconnaissance and artillery-spotting, roles in which it served usefully until worn out and superseded by the Il-2, Pe-2 and Tu-2. Barely 900-odd were built, and today not a single complete original survives.

A sound aeroplane handed an impossible task: daylight bombing, in 1941, without fighters overhead.The Su-2 in Barbarossa — a good design in the wrong war
01The Sukhoi Su-2’s origins: how Stalin’s “Ivanov” contest launched the Sukhoi name

The “Ivanov” requirement of 1936 — reportedly named after Stalin’s own telegraph pseudonym — asked Soviet designers for a rugged, easily-built aircraft able to switch between light bombing, reconnaissance and ground attack. Sukhoi’s brigade, operating under Tupolev, produced the ANT-51, and it won. When the Soviet designation system was reorganised in 1940 to credit the lead designer, the BB-1 became the Su-2. It is easy to overlook, but this modest bomber is the ancestor of one of the most famous names in combat aviation: every Su-27, Su-34 and Su-57 traces its designation lineage back to this two-seat machine of 1937.

Design & Engineering

What makes the Su-2 special

01

A wood-and-metal airframe built to be mass-produced

The Su-2 used mixed construction: a semi-monocoque fuselage of wooden formers and plywood skin, mated to metal (largely duralumin) wings with fabric-covered control surfaces. The layout was deliberately simple, reflecting the “Ivanov” brief for an aircraft that ordinary factories could turn out in quantity. The crew sat behind roughly 9 mm of armour, and the undercarriage retracted — advanced touches for a Soviet type of the late 1930s.

02

The Shvetsov M-88B radial

Production Su-2s were built around the air-cooled Shvetsov M-88B two-row radial of roughly 1,000 hp class (higher at rated altitude), after earlier prototypes tried the M-62 and M-87. It gave a top speed commonly cited between ~455 and 486 km/h — respectable for 1940, but soon eclipsed as the war accelerated engine development on all sides.

03

Modest guns, real bombs, a vulnerable gunner

Defensive and offensive armament centred on the rifle-calibre 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun — several fixed in the wings plus one or two on flexible mounts for the navigator/gunner. It carried around 400 kg of bombs normally and up to 600 kg, and could sling RS-82/RS-132 rockets. Rugged though it was, a single rear gun was never enough against massed Bf 109s in 1941.

02The Sukhoi Su-2’s construction: wood, metal and the logic of mass production

Soviet industry in the late 1930s was short of light alloys and skilled labour, so mixed wood-and-metal construction was a pragmatic norm. The Su-2’s plywood-covered wooden fuselage was cheap and easy to build and repair, while the metal wing carried the loads and the retractable gear. The trade-off was weight and, in a wooden structure, vulnerability to fire and weather. It was a sensible design for its moment — but the moment passed quickly once cannon-armed fighters and purpose-built attack aircraft such as the Il-2 arrived.

03The Sukhoi Su-2’s firepower: modest guns, a lone gunner and heavy 1941 losses

The Su-2 was a light day-bomber, not a fighter, and its armament reflects that. Rifle-calibre ShKAS guns hit hard for their weight but lacked the reach and punch of the 20 mm cannon German fighters carried. With a single navigator-gunner covering the rear, an unescorted Su-2 formation attacked in daylight was desperately exposed. Contemporary Soviet accounts record entire flights being cut down; the aircraft’s ruggedness saved some crews, but the loss rate in the opening months of the war was punishing and drove the type out of the bombing role by 1942.

Technical Data

Sukhoi Su-2 full specifications

Baseline note: the figures are for the production Su-2 with the M-88B engine, the version that equipped the short-range bomber regiments (bombardirovochnyye aviatsionnyye polki, BAP) in June 1941 and the only one built in quantity. They are taken from Shavrov’s tabulation of the state-test results, which is the closest thing to a factory record in the public domain. Two traps are worth naming. First, the specification most often printed in English — 486 km/h, ceiling 8,400 m, 1,400 hp — belongs to the M-82-engined Su-2 and Su-4 of 1942, not to the aeroplane that fought the summer of 1941. Second, the widely quoted 512 km/h was recorded by a lightened test machine stripped of external bomb and rocket racks; the squadron aircraft did 468. Deltas for the earlier M-87 aircraft, for the lightened M-88B, for the M-82 machines and for the armoured ShB are given in grey.

Dimensions & weights

Crew
2 (pilot and navigator-gunner, with duplicated flying controls — navigators brought a good many shot-up Su-2s home)
Length
10.25 m (33 ft 8 in); 10.46 m (34 ft 4 in) on the M-82 aircraft, which is the figure most tables print for all of them
Wingspan
14.30 m (46 ft 11 in)
Height
3.94 m (12 ft 11 in)
Wing area
29.00 m² (312 sq ft)
Empty weight
2,970 kg (6,548 lb); 2,816 kg (6,209 lb) for the M-87A aircraft, 3,220 kg (7,099 lb) for the M-82
Normal loaded weight
4,345 kg (9,579 lb); 4,150 kg (9,149 lb) for the lightened test aircraft
Wing loading
150 kg/m² (30.7 lb/sq ft)
Power loading
4.3 kg/hp (9.5 lb/hp)
Fuel
700 litres (154 imp gal, 185 US gal) in three tanks: 425 l in the fuselage behind the engine, 2 × 140 l in the outer wings. Unprotected — no self-sealing
Armour
9 mm pilot’s back plate; 9 mm plate below and beside the gunner
Bomb load
400 kg normal (882 lb), 600 kg maximum (1,323 lb); internal bay limited to 400 kg
Undercarriage track
2.72 m (8 ft 11 in); 750 × 250 mm braked mainwheels, retractable tailwheel, wooden skis with aluminium soles fitted in winter

Performance

Maximum speed, altitude
468 km/h (291 mph)
Maximum speed, sea level
375 km/h (233 mph)
Lightened test aircraft
512 km/h (318 mph) at 7,100 m and 410 km/h (255 mph) at sea level, without external bomb or rocket racks — the figure squadron aircraft never saw
M-82 aircraft, for comparison
486 km/h (302 mph) at 5,850 m, 430 km/h (267 mph) at sea level, ceiling 8,400 m — faster low down, worse at height, and the specification usually printed as "the Su-2"
Landing speed
136 km/h (85 mph)
Time to 5,000 m
12 min (11.3 min for the lightened aircraft, 9.8 min with the M-82)
Service ceiling
9,000 m (29,530 ft); 9,120 m (29,920 ft) lightened
Range
1,190 km (740 mi)
Take-off run
380 m (1,250 ft)
Landing run
290 m (950 ft)
Working bombing altitude
1,000–1,200 m, 3,000 m maximum — a limit set by the sight, not the aeroplane, and the reason nobody expected fighter attacks from below
Useful speed band as a spotter
220–450 km/h (137–280 mph) — the quality that kept the type in service as an artillery observer after it was withdrawn as a bomber

Propulsion & systems

Engine
1 × Tumansky M-88B, 14-cylinder two-row air-cooled radial (the ANT-51 prototype flew on an 820 hp Shvetsov M-62; production BB-1s began with the M-87A and M-87B, which broke constantly; the Su-4 and late Su-2s used the 1,400 hp Shvetsov M-82)
Power
1,000 hp (746 kW) at 6,000 m; 950 hp (708 kW) nominal at sea level
Propeller
VISh-23, three-blade, variable pitch, 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in) diameter
Engine reliability
The programme’s central problem. Four M-88Bs were changed during one 1941 state-test series, three of them failing inside three hours with scored and burnt pistons. Directors and designers at the engine works were arrested over the M-87’s failures
Structure
Mixed. Wooden semi-monocoque fuselage and fin of 0.5 mm birch veneer laid at 45° over a mould; all-metal two-spar wing in D16 with 30KhGSA steel spar booms; fabric-covered control surfaces. Designed for flow assembly with full parts interchangeability, which was unusual in Soviet practice
Turret
MV-5 shielded turret for the navigator. About 250 aircraft were built with the lighter TSS-1 instead in spring 1941; the head of NII VVS judged the Su-2 unacceptably weakened by it and the MV-5 was restored at the end of May 1941
Bombsight
OPB-1M in the navigator’s floor. Castor oil thrown from the engine breather regularly blinded it and the lower glazing — a routine, unglamorous defect that mattered more than most
Camera
AFA-13 on the starboard side of the navigator’s station; AFA-1 and NAFA-19 installations were developed for the dedicated reconnaissance conversion
Radio
RSB "Dvina" in the navigator’s cabin. Normally stripped out of bombers to save weight and kept only in reconnaissance and artillery-spotting aircraft — a false economy that is visible in the loss reports
Navigation
RPK-2 radio direction finders were fitted to 99 aircraft at Kharkov, Bobruisk, Kiev and Vitebsk in the last weeks before the invasion
First flight
25 August 1937, as the ANT-51 "Ivanov", Mikhail Gromov at the controls
Service entry
Accepted for production as BB-1 in March 1939; first deliveries late 1940; renamed Su-2 in December 1940; in units from January 1941
Number built
893 by factory records (Factory 135 Kharkov 729, then 56 more after evacuation to Molotov; Factory 207 Dolgoprudny 92; Factory 31 Taganrog 16). English sources almost always print 910, which is the Sukhoi company museum’s figure.
Unit cost
~430,000 roubles (1940 works cost at Factory 135; judged very high at the time, and one of the arguments used against the type)
04The Sukhoi Su-2’s operating costs: why no reliable price exists

The Su-2 was a wartime Soviet state product, built to plan rather than sold on any market, so there is no reliable unit cost and no credible cost-per-flight-hour figure for it in the open record. Soviet aircraft of this era were costed internally in roubles under a command economy, in terms that do not translate cleanly into comparable dollar prices. Any specific cost figure you may see attached to a Su-2 should be treated as a guess rather than a sourced number.

Armament & payload

The Su-2 went to war with three rifle-calibre machine guns because a committee had taken the other three away

The armament every reference gives for the Su-2 — four to six 7.62 mm ShKAS in the wings — describes the drawing, not the aeroplane. Four fixed wing guns and a ventral hatch gun were designed, and Shavrov lists six guns in total. But in September 1940, when the Committee of Defence reviewed the gun and cannon armament of every production aircraft with a view to strengthening it, the BB-1 was the single type it went the other way on: two of the four wing guns were deleted and the ventral ShKAS was removed altogether. Pavel Sukhoi had himself argued that a hatch gun and armour for the navigator would add weight and shift the centre of gravity aft, and unit trials had concluded that attacks from below were improbable at the 1,000–1,200 m working altitude the bombsight imposed. Both judgements were wrong within a year. The aircraft that met the Luftwaffe in June 1941 carried two fixed ShKAS in the outer wings and one on the navigator’s MV-5 turret: three guns of rifle calibre, against fighters carrying cannon. Units cut the ventral hatch and refitted an MV-2 mount locally and unofficially, and later production restored the wing pair to four, so any given airframe’s fit depends on when it was built and which regiment had it.

Gun

  • As delivered from September 1940: 2 × 7.62 mm ShKAS fixed in the outer wing panels outside the propeller disc, 650 rounds per gun, fired from triggers on the control column.
  • 1 × 7.62 mm ShKAS on the navigator’s shielded MV-5 turret, later MV-5m. About 250 aircraft carried the lighter TSS-1 instead until it was reversed out in May 1941.
  • As designed and as later restored: 4 × ShKAS in the wings, 5 guns in total; some aircraft carried 1–2 movable guns at the navigator’s station.
  • Ventral hatch gun: deleted by the September 1940 decision, then cut back in by units in the field with an MV-2 mount as soon as the war showed why it had been there.
  • Su-4 and ShB: 2 × 12.7 mm Berezin BS in the centre section replacing the wing ShKAS — the armament the aircraft should have had in 1941.

Air-to-air

  • None intended. The two fixed ShKAS were strafing guns, not fighter armament.
  • Su-2s were nonetheless pressed into service as improvised single-seat fighters in the first weeks of the war, when Soviet fighter strength collapsed.
  • The turret ShKAS could hit German fighters and repeatedly did — combat reports describe bursts striking Bf 109 and Bf 110 engine installations without stopping the attack. Rifle calibre was simply not enough.
  • On 22 June 1941 an Su-2 of 211 BAP became the first aircraft shot down by Alexander Pokryshkin, who did not recognise the silhouette of a new and closely held Soviet type. Ivan Pstygo, flying in the same formation, watched it happen; both men became marshals of aviation.

Air-to-surface guided

  • None carried. No guided air-to-surface weapon existed in Soviet service at the time.
  • The nearest thing was the RBS-132 rocket-propelled armour-piercing shell, trialled successfully on Su-2 No. 070403 at Podlipki in late September 1941.
  • The trial was wasted: the ammunition commissariat was producing only standard RS-82 rockets, and Sukhoi was ordered to convert the installation back.
  • A pattern for the whole programme — the right idea, arriving after the decision that made it irrelevant.

Bombs

  • Internal bay beneath the pilot’s cockpit, on cassette racks: up to 400 kg (882 lb) of small bombs in fixed combinations — 30 × 8 kg, 30 × 10 kg, 20 × 15 kg, 20 × 20 kg, 12 × 25 kg, 4 × 50 kg or 4 × 100 kg.
  • External: two 100 kg bombs under the centre section, or 250 kg bombs, or smaller weapons on up to 14 racks.
  • Maximum total 600 kg (1,323 lb). Internal carriage was Sukhoi’s own idea, adopted for speed at a time when almost every comparable aircraft hung its bombs in the airstream.
  • The bay was the aircraft’s best feature and its tightest constraint: it set the 400 kg internal limit that no amount of external load could make good.

Rockets

  • 8 × RS-132 or 10 × RS-82 unguided rockets on underwing rails, fitted during the war.
  • From mid-October 1941 every production aircraft was to have the attachment points and every fourth aircraft the rails themselves.
  • Rockets were the Su-2’s only real ground-attack punch, and the reason regiments kept flying it as a ground-attack shturmovik it was never designed to be.
  • Using a light bomber that way is precisely what drove the losses of summer 1941, and the aircraft has carried the blame for the doctrine ever since.

Pods & other stores

  • AFA-13 camera in the navigator’s station — standard fit, and the basis of the reconnaissance role.
  • RSB "Dvina" radio, retained on reconnaissance and artillery-spotting aircraft and stripped from bombers.
  • KD-2 underwing cassettes and the NV-5 low-level bombsight were trialled in 1941 but not adopted for production.
  • Wooden skis with aluminium soles, folded up against the centre section when retracted, for operations from snow.
  • A photo-reconnaissance conversion with an additional fuel tank was worked out at Factory 289 in 1941.

Three typical loadouts

Short-range bombing, June 1941
400 kg internal in the bay — typically 4 × FAB-100 — run in at 1,000–1,200 m on the OPB-1M, with 2 × ShKAS forward and one on the turret. The load the regiments in the Kiev and Odessa districts actually flew, and thin in every dimension: bomb weight, gun calibre and altitude all set by compromises made before the war.
Ground attack, autumn 1941
8–10 × RS-82 rockets underwing plus a partial bay load, strafing with the wing guns. This is the mission that killed Su-2 crews, and it is the mission the aircraft was never designed for: no armour worth the name around the engine, no heavy forward armament, no protection for the fuel.
Artillery spotting, 1942–1943
Bombs deleted, RSB radio and AFA-13 camera retained, working between 220 and 450 km/h over the corps front. NII VVS found the Su-2 clearly better at this than a two-seat Yak-7, and it is the role the survivors flew until they wore out. The Su-2’s all-round view, the feature Sukhoi had designed in for reconnaissance, was what made it good at the job.

Sourcing caveat: gun fits above follow Khazanov and Gordyukov’s account of the September 1940 Committee of Defence decision and the airframe descriptions in Shavrov. The two disagree because they describe different production periods — Shavrov’s six-gun figure is the design and the later fit, the three-gun figure is what left the factories after September 1940. Any single number for "the Su-2’s armament" is therefore wrong for some of the aircraft.

Variants

The Su-2 was Pavel Sukhoi’s first production aeroplane, and the "catastrophic losses" it is remembered for do not survive the arithmetic

The aircraft began as "Ivanov", a 1936 competition initiated by Stalin for a multi-purpose machine that could find a target by reconnaissance and then attack it — a mass-produced aeroplane simple enough to be built in numbers no other class of combat aircraft could match. TsAGI, Polikarpov, the Kharkov institute, Grigorovich, Kocherigin and Ilyushin all entered. The winner was a team under Pavel Sukhoi working inside Tupolev’s bureau, whose all-metal two-seat low-wing design flew as the ANT-51 on 25 August 1937. Sukhoi was given his own bureau on Stalin’s instruction, and this was the first aircraft to reach production under his name.

The reputation is the harder thing to get right. In 1941 the VVS flew roughly 5,000 Su-2 sorties for 222 aircraft lost in combat or missing — one loss per 22.5 sorties, against a Soviet bomber average that year of one per 14. In the 66th Air Division, which flew Pe-2s and Su-2s side by side, the Pe-2 lost one aircraft per 32 sorties and the Su-2 one per 71, despite the Petlyakov’s better paper performance. Gordon and Khazanov’s wider tabulation puts the Su-2 at 80 sorties per loss against 54 for the Pe-2, 26 for the two-seat Il-2 and 13 for the single-seater.

What did happen is that regiments were burned out at appalling speed. 103 and 135 BAP had been redeployed to Novozybkov by 28 June 1941 with 38 and 43 Su-2s left on strength out of an establishment of 64 each. That is a week’s war. But the cause was a doctrine that sent unarmoured light bombers to strafe in daylight without escort, not a bad aeroplane. The verdict on the Su-2 is that it was obsolete as a concept the day it was fielded, competently designed, and blamed for the decisions of the men who used it.

ANT-51 "Ivanov" / SZ-1, SZ-2 (1937–1938, 2 built)
All-metal prototypes on the 820 hp Shvetsov M-62. 403 km/h at 4,700 m — judged insufficient, but the airframe was sound enough to justify re-engining. "SZ" stood for Stalinskoye Zadaniye, Stalin’s assignment.
SZ-3 (1938–1939, 1 built)
M-87, then M-87A: 468 km/h at 5,600 m, fuel cut from 930 to 700 litres, wing gun ammunition raised to 850 rounds each. Test pilot Boris Pokrovsky called it "a model of a thought-out, cultured machine". Accepted for production in March 1939.
BB-1 (1939–1940)
Production form, redesigned in twenty days into mixed wood-and-metal construction because aluminium was scarce and expensive. Built at Factory 135 in Kharkov, 31 in Taganrog and 207 in Dolgoprudny. Taganrog was switched to LaGG-3 fighters before delivering a single one and passed 70 near-complete airframes to Dolgoprudny.
Su-2 (M-88, M-88B) (December 1940–1941, the bulk of 893)
Renamed after its designer in December 1940 under the new designation system. The M-88B gave 1,000 hp at 6,000 m and 468 km/h. The 1941 plan called for 1,150 aircraft; the first half of the year was actually overfulfilled at 119 per cent, against an industry bomber average of 86.
Su-2 lightened test aircraft (December 1940–March 1941, 1 modified)
Aircraft No. 1/6, with the oil cooler moved into the centre section, a reprofiled cowling and intake, and the bulky MV-5 replaced by a TSS-1 turret. 33–38 km/h faster and 700 m higher than standard; the first Su-2 past 500 km/h. Production rushed the TSS-1 into service before the turret had passed its own tests, and it had to be withdrawn.
Su-2 (M-82) (1941–1942, small numbers)
The 1,400 hp Shvetsov radial ordered onto the Su-2 by NKAP order No. 438 of 13 May 1941. 486 km/h at 5,850 m, much better low down, but shorter-ranged and with a dangerously shallow nose-over angle on landing — 18.5° against a required 26.5°.
SZ-1 with M-63TK (1940, 1 conversion)
Turbocharged high-altitude experiment. Cracked turbo ducting and an oil pump without the altitude capability to match; passed to LII and forgotten when the war began.
"MN" dubler (1940, 2 planned)
Modified BB-1s built at the new Factory 289 for the 2,100 hp Urmin M-90. The engine never left development; one airframe was re-engined with the M-81, which was itself killed off as a dead end in November 1940.
ShB / BB-2 (1940, 1 prototype)
Armoured attack-bomber development with an M-88, heavier armour, cleaner aerodynamics and main gear that rotated 90° before retracting aft into the wings, in the manner of the P-40. Bomb load raised to 600 kg. The prototype was lost on test and the Il-2 made it redundant.
Su-4 / BB-3 (1941–1942, small series)
Intended for the M-90, built with the M-82. Wooden wing outer panels on metal spars because of the duralumin shortage; wing armament finally upgraded to two 12.7 mm Berezin BS. 450 km/h at sea level, 6,000 m in 10.5 minutes. Production ended in early 1942 when the airframe kits evacuated from Kharkov ran out.
UTB (1946)
Not an Su-2 but its epilogue: Sukhoi’s bureau designed the low-powered ASh-21 bomber trainer on the Tu-2 airframe, closing the circle with the man in whose brigade he had drawn the Ivanov nine years earlier.

Closing caveat: no original Su-2 survives anywhere. Every aircraft displayed as one is a reproduction. The machine in the Stalingrad Battle panorama museum at Volgograd is a full-size metal replica built to original drawings recovered from the archive on Pavel Sukhoi’s personal instruction, restored by Sukhoi company specialists in 2010; the Central Air Force Museum at Monino holds a mock-up, reported as a wooden one made in 1982; and the aircraft in the Great Patriotic War Museum on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow was built in 1995. One further caution about the type’s best-known story: the ramming attributed to Senior Lieutenant Yekaterina Zelenko on 12 September 1941 near Romny, the only air ramming ever credited to a woman, is contested. Her posthumous 1941 award recommendation and the 135 BAP combat reports do not describe a ramming, later accounts disagree over whether she struck with a wing or the tail, a 1965 petition for the Hero of the Soviet Union was refused for want of evidence, and Mikhail Timin’s archival work concludes she was shot down by a pair of Bf 109Fs of II./JG 51 which recorded no losses. The Hero of the Soviet Union was finally awarded on 5 May 1990. The ramming should be reported as a claim, not as a fact.

Timeline

From Stalin’s contest to a vanished type

1936

The “Ivanov” requirement

The Soviet leadership calls for a simple, mass-producible multi-role aircraft; Sukhoi’s brigade, working under Tupolev, takes up the challenge.

1937

First flight

The prototype ANT-51 flies on 25 August, piloted by Mikhail Gromov.

1940

Becomes the Su-2

Ordered into production as the BB-1, the design is renamed Su-2 — the first production aircraft to carry the Sukhoi name.

Jun 1941

Thrown into Barbarossa

About 100 Su-2s are in service when Germany invades. They fly daylight bombing missions and take heavy losses; one is even downed by future ace Alexander Pokryshkin in a friendly-fire error on day one.

Sep 1941

Zelenko’s ram

On 12 September, Snr Lt Yekaterina Zelenko rams a German fighter over Ukraine — the only aerial ram ever carried out by a woman.

1942

Withdrawn from bombing

Outclassed as a bomber, the Su-2 shifts to reconnaissance and artillery observation; production ends after roughly 910 aircraft.

1943–44

Last service

Surviving Su-2s soldier on as artillery spotters and hacks before being retired as newer types take over.

Today

No original left

No complete original airframe is known to survive; a reconstructed Su-2 is displayed at the Central Air Force Museum, Monino.

Stories & Eyewitnesses

From the front: twelve Su-2 stories

Origin

Stalin’s “Ivanov” contest

A 1936 requirement for a simple multi-role aircraft launched the design that became the Su-2.

Read the full story
In 1936 the Soviet leadership issued a requirement, code-named “Ivanov,” for a rugged, easily-built aircraft able to bomb, scout and support the army. Reportedly the name echoed one of Stalin’s own telegraph pseudonyms. Several bureaux competed; the winner was a brigade led by Pavel Sukhoi, working inside Tupolev’s organisation. That entry became the ANT-51, then the BB-1, and finally the Su-2.
First flight · 1937

Gromov takes it up

The prototype ANT-51 first flew on 25 August 1937 in the hands of the celebrated test pilot Mikhail Gromov.

Read the full story
The prototype carried the Tupolev “ANT” designation because Sukhoi’s team worked under Andrei Tupolev at the time. On 25 August 1937 the famous long-distance record pilot Mikhail Gromov took it into the air. Early examples were underpowered on the Shvetsov M-62; it was the later M-88B radial that gave the production Su-2 its useful performance.
The name

The first Sukhoi

When the Soviet designation system was reworked in 1940, the BB-1 became the Su-2 — the first aircraft to carry the Sukhoi name.

Read the full story
For its first years the aircraft was the BB-1, for blizhniy bombardirovshchik — “short-range bomber.” In 1940 the USSR switched to naming aircraft after their chief designers, and the BB-1 became the Su-2. It is a small footnote with a huge legacy: this modest two-seater is the direct designation ancestor of every Su-27, Su-34 and Su-57 that followed.
22 June 1941

Shot down by his own side

On the first day of the invasion, a Su-2 was downed by future top ace Alexander Pokryshkin, who did not recognise the new type.

Read the full story
The Su-2 was so new and so secret that Soviet pilots barely knew it. On 22 June 1941, the opening day of Barbarossa, Alexander Pokryshkin — later one of the highest-scoring Allied aces and a three-time Hero of the Soviet Union — mistook a Su-2 for an enemy aircraft and shot it down in a tragic friendly-fire error. The pilot survived; the navigator was killed. It was a grim illustration of the chaos of those first hours.
Barbarossa

Daylight without escort

Committed to unescorted daylight bombing against an enemy with air superiority, Su-2 units suffered severe losses in 1941.

Read the full story
When Germany invaded, only around a hundred Su-2s were in front-line service. They were flung into daylight bombing missions, frequently without fighter escort, against a Luftwaffe that held the sky. The results were predictable and brutal: Soviet accounts record entire flights being cut down. The aircraft was not at fault so much as the impossible tactical position it was placed in.
Toughness

Bringing crews home

For all its vulnerability, the Su-2 earned a reputation as a rugged machine that could absorb damage and still fly.

Read the full story
Crews and historians alike credit the Su-2 with genuine toughness. Its structure could soak up battle damage, and more than a few aircraft nursed their crews back to friendly lines riddled with holes. Ruggedness could not offset the lack of escorts or the rifle-calibre defensive armament, but it meant the type was respected by the men who flew it even as losses mounted.
12 Sep 1941

Zelenko’s taran

Senior Lieutenant Yekaterina Zelenko rammed a German fighter over Ukraine — the only aerial ram ever performed by a woman.

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On 12 September 1941, near Anastasyevka in north-eastern Ukraine, Snr Lt Yekaterina Zelenko was flying a Su-2 on reconnaissance when she was set upon by German Messerschmitts. By the most-repeated account she shot one down, then, out of ammunition, deliberately rammed a second, destroying it and dying in the collision. She remains the only woman known to have carried out an aerial ram, and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1990.
From 1942

The army’s eyes

Withdrawn from bombing, the Su-2 found a second life as a reconnaissance and artillery-observation aircraft.

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As it was overtaken by better-armed and better-protected designs, the Su-2 was pulled out of the bombing role and put to work as a scout and artillery spotter. In these tasks its good visibility and reasonable endurance were assets, and dedicated correction squadrons flew it directing Soviet artillery fire well into the war before the surviving airframes were finally worn out.
Dead end

The M-82 and Su-4

Attempts to keep the design competitive with a more powerful M-82 engine led to the Su-4, but the war had moved on.

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Sukhoi tried to keep the design relevant by fitting the more powerful Shvetsov M-82 radial, producing the improved Su-4 and re-engined Su-2 variants. The gains were real but modest, and by the time they appeared the Soviet Union had far more capable aircraft — the Il-2 Sturmovik and Pe-2 — pouring off the lines. The Su-2 line was allowed to lapse.
Superseded

Out of production

Roughly 910 Su-2s were built before production ended in 1942, overtaken by the Il-2, Pe-2 and Tu-2.

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Production totals are cited between about 893 and 910 aircraft — a small run by Soviet wartime standards. The reason was simple: the USSR needed the armoured Il-2 for ground attack and the fast Pe-2 for dive bombing, and factory capacity was better spent on them. The Su-2 was quietly discontinued, its designer already at work on the fighters that would make his name.
Legacy

The vanished aeroplane

No complete original Su-2 is known to survive anywhere in the world today.

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For an aircraft that helped launch one of aviation’s great design bureaux, the Su-2 has left remarkably little behind. Built largely of wood, flown hard and then scrapped, no confirmed complete original airframe is known to exist. This scarcity is part of why authentic photographs of the type are themselves comparatively rare.
Preserved

The Monino reconstruction

A reconstructed Su-2 stands at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino, keeping the shape of the type alive.

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The best-known surviving example is the Su-2 displayed at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino, near Moscow. Its provenance is debated — it is generally described as a reconstruction or replica rather than a genuine wartime original — but it preserves the lines of Sukhoi’s first aircraft for visitors, alongside a separate example that has stood at the Sukhoi design bureau itself.
Gallery

The Su-2 in pictures

A Sukhoi Su-2 light bomber Pavel Sukhois first production design.
A Sukhoi Su-2 light bomber — Pavel Sukhoi’s first production design.Photo: SDASM Archives · no known copyright restrictions
A Su-2 crew of a Soviet artillery-correction squadron receives its mission briefing.
A Su-2 crew of a Soviet artillery-correction squadron receives its mission briefing.Photo: Unknown Soviet photographer (I. Meylus collection) · Public domain
A Su-2 crew reports back after a completed sortie the types later reconnaissance role.
A Su-2 crew reports back after a completed sortie — the type’s later reconnaissance role.Photo: Unknown Soviet photographer (I. Meylus collection) · Public domain
A preserved Su-2 displayed at the Sukhoi design bureau in Moscow.
A preserved Su-2 displayed at the Sukhoi design bureau in Moscow.Photo: mos.ru · CC BY 4.0
A Su-2 shot down over Ukraine in 1941, photographed by a German war photographer.
A Su-2 shot down over Ukraine in 1941, photographed by a German war photographer.Photo: Willy Pragher / Staatsarchiv Freiburg · CC BY 4.0
Watch

The Su-2 in motion

Epic Soviet Documentaries: Sukhoi Su-2 Light Bomber Plane — a short archival profile of the type, its origins in the “Ivanov” programme and its hard war service.

Operations

Where the Su-2 flew

Combat Record

The Su-2’s war in numbers

The Su-2 was a light bomber and scout, not a fighter, and its record is one of sacrifice rather than aerial victories. Committed to unescorted daylight bombing in 1941, it took punishing losses before being pulled back to reconnaissance and artillery observation. Its most famous moment in the air was not a kill but a ram.

~100In front-line service on 22 June 1941
1 of 1Only aerial ram ever flown by a woman — Zelenko, in a Su-2
~910Built — most lost or worn out by war’s end

Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures are best estimates from the sources below.

Questions & Answers

Everything people ask about the Sukhoi Su-2

Can I fly in a Sukhoi Su-2?
No — there are no airworthy Su-2s anywhere, and the type is essentially extinct: no complete original is even known to survive. You can, however, fly in genuine ex-military jets today, from L-39 jet trainers to supersonic fighters — see migflug.com/flights-prices/.
What was the Sukhoi Su-2?
A Soviet single-engine, two-seat light bomber and short-range reconnaissance aircraft of the Second World War. It first flew in 1937 as the ANT-51, entered service as the BB-1, and was renamed the Su-2 in 1940 — Pavel Sukhoi’s first production design.
Who designed the Su-2, and why does the name matter?
It was designed by a brigade led by Pavel Sukhoi, then working under Andrei Tupolev, which is why the prototype flew as the Tupolev ANT-51. It is historically important as the first aircraft to carry the Sukhoi designation — the ancestor of every later Su-27, Su-34 and Su-57.
Was the Su-2 any good?
The design was sound and notably rugged for its day, but it was a light bomber sent into a war that quickly outgrew it. Committed to unescorted daylight bombing in 1941, it suffered heavy losses; it was more successful later in the reconnaissance and artillery-spotting role.
Did a woman really ram an enemy plane in a Su-2?
Yes. On 12 September 1941, near Anastasyevka in Ukraine, Snr Lt Yekaterina Zelenko rammed a German fighter while flying a Su-2, destroying it and dying in the collision. She is recognised as the only woman ever to have performed an aerial ram, and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1990.
How many Su-2s survive today?
No complete original airframe is known to survive. A reconstructed Su-2 is displayed at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino near Moscow, and another example stands at the Sukhoi design bureau; both are best described as reconstructions rather than genuine wartime originals.
Why was the Su-2 retired so quickly?
It was overtaken by better aircraft. The armoured Il-2 Sturmovik and the fast Pe-2 were far better suited to ground attack and dive bombing, so Su-2 production ended in 1942 after roughly 910 aircraft and the survivors were relegated to secondary roles.
The part of the collection you can touch

You can’t fly the Sukhoi Su-2.
These, you can.

Some legends only live in museums — others are fuelled and waiting. MiGFlug has put civilians in real military jet cockpits since 2004.

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Related Aircraft

Continue the tour

The ReplacementIlyushin Il-2 SturmovikThe armoured “flying tank” that took over the ground-attack role the Su-2 could not survive — and the most-produced combat aircraft in history.Read the Il-2 storyThe RivalPetlyakov Pe-2The fast twin-engine dive bomber that, with the Il-2, made the light single-engine Su-2 obsolete on the Eastern Front.Read the Pe-2 storyThe DescendantSukhoi Su-25 FrogfootSukhoi’s modern armoured ground-attack jet — the design bureau the Su-2 founded, decades on and still doing the close-support job.Read the Su-25 story
Sources & Further Reading

Every fact, checked